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Yeah, it's kinda like that.
The standard place to imprison distressed damsels and overthrown princes: A tower. Preferably the tallest tower, in the biggest castle, on the highest hill, in the most dangerous land in the whole wide world. After all, It's All Upstairs From Here.
May be attached to an Evil Tower of Ominousness or The Alcatraz, although some are freestanding. A Bedsheet Ladder or Rapunzel Hair is an invaluable tool in such cases. Possibly inspired by the Tower of London; originally a royal residence, the Tower later became a prison that was often used to house royal prisoners.
See also Locked Away in a Monastery (used for broadly similar purposes, but without the implication of evil).
Examples:
Anime
- Clarisse in The Castle Of Cagliostro.
- Fai/Yuui and his twin brother in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle.
- Alice of Pandora Hearts was this to a tee. When she was alive. Jack was her first friend after he discovered her in her lonely prison of a tower. At least, the Will of the Abyss' first friend was Jack. As for the Alice we know, she has been known to get along well with Glen. The both of them. Without realizing that they are her father and uncle respectively.
- Before her was her mother, Lacie. Though, this Girl in the Tower isn't as easily contained as other examples, constantly slipping out whenever she gets the chance.
- Rachel from Tower Of God, the subversion that she went there on purpose and yet has to reach the top.
- A male example: Len from the manga adaptation of mothy's "Aku no Meshitsukai" is locked in a tower from birth when it's revealed that he possesses the birthmark that the fortune teller prophesied would lead the country into ruin. His twin sister Rin eventually finds him there and starts visiting him.
- Diva from Blood+.
- Princess Shirahoshi from One Piece is a variation: Her Stalker with a Crush, Vander Decken, can literally kill her from miles away because of his powers. This means that she had to stay confined in her room, which is located atop a tower, for ten years. And since she's only sixteen, that means she literally spent most of her life in that tower.
Comic Books
Fairy Tales
- "Rapunzel" is a famous case of this, although she nixed the bedsheet in favour of nature's ladder.
- "The Tinderbox
 " is another fairy tale with a damsel in distress who must be rescued by the handsome hero.
- In "The Grateful Beasts"", the princess gets locked in the tower for complaining about her father's Impossible Tasks. Which means she isn't there when the hero summons all the wolves in the land — and it turns out they are hungry.
Fan Works
- For the first half of Zastruga, Jack Frost inverts this trope as a male example, though his "tower" stretches down into the ground rather than rising up over it.
Film, Animated
Film, Live Action
Literature
- The original Man In The Iron Mask was said to have been held in a tower in the Bastille.
- The overthrown king Peter's imprisonment in the tower called "The Needle", in Stephen King's novel The Eyes of the Dragon.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire, Donella Hornwood got locked in a tower by Ramsay Snow. Sansa Stark was also held in one in Maegor's Holdfast after her father and members of his household were killed. Neither of them were rescued during their stays in their respective towers, though Lady Donella's fate is considerably worse.
- The fourth book of the series has a chapter called "The Princess in the Tower" about Princess Arianne of Dorne after she has tried and failed to crown Myrcella Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and start a war with the Lannisters.
- And Val, the so-called "wildling princess", is held prisoner in one of the towers of Castle Black.
- In the Conan the Barbarian story "The Hour Of The Dragon," the Countess Albiona (a supporter of King Conan) is imprisoned in the Iron Tower of Tarantia because she refused to become the consort of a tyrannical puppet king. Conan infiltrates the tower through a hidden door, kills her jailors, and rescues her.
- Also, in The People Of The Black Circle the Devi Yasmina is captured and imprisoned in a tower atop Mount Yimsha. This time, Conan infiltrates the tower with the help of an enchanted girdle that protects him from the magic of the evil wizards within.
- Done to Bellina in The Elenium. Subverted in that she is a cannibalistic Eldritch Abomination worshipper who needs to be locked away for the good of the surrounding villages.
- The abducted Princess Eilonwy is found in a tower of her ancestral home, Caer Colur, in the third book of the Chronicles of Prydain.
- In The Silmarillion, Lúthien is put in a treehouse high enough to be considered a tower. She escaped and went to help her beloved, Beren, finish his Engagement Challenge.
- In Gene Wolfe's Pandora by Holly Hollander, at the end, Holly decides on Staying With Friends. The friends look her over and conclude that since she's a teenaged girl, obviously she get the tower room.
- Spoofed in Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks. The handsome prince turns up to rescue the Damsel in Distress in her tower. She helps him climb most of the way up and then lets go of the rope so he'll fall to his death, as she knows she's in a Lotus-Eater Machine.
Live-Action TV
- Clementina from Carrusel is kept locked away in her own home after her parents are hospitalized and she's in the care of her very overprotective aunts.
- The Legend Of Dick And Dom episode "Princess Gladys" features the heroes rescuing the Princess though not her sister from the top of a tower in a castle guarded by the Evil Dancing Dolphins of Doom.
- The Goodies. Spoofed in "Camelot Capers" when Graham goes to rescue Rapunzel from her tower by climbing her hair, only when he puts his weight on it he yanks her out of the tower.
- Merlin: Gwen in "The Dark Tower", stated explicitly by Gwaine in the episode.
Mythology
- Princess Philomela of Athens was first raped by her brother in law, King Thereus of Thracia, then had her tongue cut out and was thrown into a tower in the middle of the nearby forest. She got out of there via first sewing a tapestry that represented her Break the Cutie process, then having a caretaker take it to her sister Procne aka Thereus's wife, who the bailed her out. It went From Bad to Worse very soon.
Theatre
- Happens to Princess Jasmine in the play Sheik, Rattle and Roll, where she insists on finishing her song before allowing herself to be rescued..
Video Games
- Princess Cassima of Kings Quest VI Heir Today Gone Tomorrow spends most of the game in a tower. In fact, her musical motif is called "Girl in the Tower."
- Raz must make his way up Thorney Tower in Psychonauts, to rescue the Girl in the Tower.
- Dragon Quest IV has Rose, hidden away in a tower because Humans Are Bastards.
- Ki, the shrine maiden in The Tower of Druaga.
- ZUN, creator of Touhou, must be fond of this trope:
- Imperishable Night: In Eientei, Kaguya is safely hidden at the end of a long, long corridor that leads to outer space.
- Perfect Cherry Blossom: While it's more of an afterlife, the Hakugyokurou where Yuyuko resides is translated as "White Jade Tower". It's located high above the storm clouds.
- Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: Subverted, Flandre is hidden in the underground cellar.
- Professor Layton and the Curious Village has the Baron's daughter of the eponymous village living in a tower, and the heroes eventually rescue her at the game's ending. This is something of a twist on the trope, however, because she's not imprisoned up there - she can leave the tower whenever she pleases, and in fact is seen doing so (though the heroes don't know who she is at the time). She just can't leave the village.
- The Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princess has Link first meet the imprisoned Zelda in the tallest tower of Hyrule Castle, at which point he's informed that it's not just his home village that's in danger.
- In the PC game Love Chronicles: The Sword and the Rose, the Prince needs to get into the castle tower to rescue the Princess, who is being held prisoner by a hideous beast. But when he finally gets to the tower, he finds only the beast. The beast is actually the ensorcelled Princess.
- Princess Briar Rose in the Dark Parables is asleep in a tower.
- Princess Sophia, the Sleeping Beauty-ish heroine of the Awakening series of PC games, begins the first game (Awakening: The Dreamless Castle) by waking up from her enchanted sleep in the tower of an almost empty castle. In a refreshing twist, Sophia is a self-rescuing princess who finds her own way out.
- Princess Peach in the Mario games .
- Namine in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.
- Deirdre of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War is a largely voluntary case. She's not physically locked up, but lives in a very secluded community in a forest and she's strictly forbidden from meeting men from the outside. This is because she is a distant descendant of Loputus, and could potentially give birth to someone capable of resurrecting him.
- Also, Deirdre's mother Cygiun was subjected to the same treatment, for exactly the same reason.
- Bioshock Infinite has Elizabeth, who lives in a tower shaped like a giant angelic statue of herself, where she's observed in secret by scientists and slowly siphoned to produce the Vigors.
Web Animation
Web Comics
Western Animation
- The Sleeping Beauty in the Fractured Fairy Tales version, which is a direct parody of the Disney version. The Prince (who looks like Walt Disney) realizes he can make a fortune off tourists so he turns the castle into SleepingBeautyLand.
- The opening sequence of the Australian cartoon series Arthur And The Square Knights Of The Round Table has Arthur "rescuing" Guinevere from a tower in Camelot. It was a mere spoof, though, she was getting ready to have dinner with him.
- Quasimodo is a rare male example from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- Jenny from the pilot of My Life As A Teenage Robot is a variant of sorts. Jenny is kept in her room on the top floor, until the world needs saving. When Tuck claims to have seen a monster up there, Brad climbs up to see what it is.
- An episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes features a girl named Ariane held in a tower by Lucius. Jimmy and Beezy spend the entire episode trying to rescue her. When they do, she transforms into a giant bug monster and levels Miseryville. As Lucius put it, "She was in there for a reason."
- The lady Melissa in the Looney Tunes classic The Scarlet Pumpernickel.
- An episode of Tales From The Cryptkeeper had a twisted take on this, where the person the Prince Charmless and his put-upon younger brother think is a traditional Sleeping Beauty is actually a vampire.
- Invoked in one Gummi Bears episode by Cavin; when he and Princess Calla are captured and taken to Drekmore by the ogres, Cavin tells them that royal prisoners go in the tower. The ogres agree, but seperate the two by putting Cavin in the regulare dungeon.
Real Life
- What happened to Princess Gwenllian of Wales and her cousins after Wales was conquered by England. In the newborn Gwenllian's case, it was not just to keep her from marrying and having children when older, but to keep her completely hidden from the world.
- It also happened in the myth of Saint Barbara, who was locked in a tower by her father Dioscorus so she wouldn't convert to Christianity. She still turned towards the Christian God, and once her dad found out, it got worse.
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